Idaho Towns Stew Over Tourist Potato Center : Salute to Spud at Root of Squabble

A battle is boiling in eastern Idaho for the hearts and dollars of anyone who has ever seen, eaten or even heard of Idaho’s famous potatoes.

Three towns all want a bit of potato power to fire up local tourism, and some seem prepared to mash the opposition in their rush to open a spud center celebrating the state’s most important crop.

“We think we’re going to build a center here in the next year that’s going to be a real salute to the Idaho potato,” said Tran King, owner of Transaction Packaging in Rigby and chief backer of the town’s project.

Rigby, in the Upper Snake River Valley, wants to use a five-acre roadside park for an information center, spud museum, gift shop, production and equipment exhibit and potato-made food emporium.

The idea is to peel away a few more tourist dollars from U.S. Highway 20, the main route through the area to Yellowstone National Park.

Trouble is, folks in nearby Rexburg and Blackfoot have the same idea.

And each town thinks it has what it takes to put the potato’s best root forward, as it were.

“Inasmuch as Bingham County is the potato capital of the world, we just felt that we ought to capitalize on that a little bit,” Blackfoot Mayor C. Dean Hill said. “We don’t mean for this to be a problem for Rigby or Rexburg, but Bingham County does produce more potatoes than any other county in the United States.”

Blackfoot officials envision a two-block downtown complex centered on an old Union Pacific Railroad depot that would be renovated with local contributions and about $40,000 from a state community development block grant.

Spud on a Flatcar

Rexburg’s plans are less elaborate but perhaps more eye-catching.

A small, potato-oriented gift shop will be established this winter at a gas station and convenience store near Rexburg’s south exit off U.S. 20.

And Chamber of Commerce President Gary Olsen says he has big plans: His proposed Idaho Potato Pavilion would be housed in a 45-foot-long cement and foam structure formed and painted to look like a giant Burbank russet and perched atop a railroad flatcar.

Postcards with a similar scene have been popular Idaho souvenirs for decades.

“I don’t think we’re stopping one out of 10 cars here in Rexburg right now. There’s nothing here to stop them,” Olsen said. “It indicates to me that people are looking for things to stop and see, and we just felt that the Idaho potato industry is a natural.”

King seems to feel that Rigby’s competitors’ ideas are half-baked.

“In the case of a couple of other towns, they’re taking things they don’t know what else to do with and trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” he said.

None of the potato promoters claims an exclusive right to speak for the industry, or to reap the rewards of potato popularity. But the prospect of having three similar facilities within about 50 miles could put the Idaho Potato Commission in a bit of a bind.

Officials from all three communities have approached the commission about possible financial support or at least material cooperation. But Mel Anderson, who became director of the commission Dec. 1, said he is steering clear of the spud squabble.

“I commend them. I think it’s great, but I don’t think we’re going to decide which one should be more important,” Anderson said. “The politics of getting involved with this is a little difficult. You’d have to support all of them equally because you have growers and processors and shippers in each area.”